Overcoming the Culture Shock! ACT #6
Overcoming the Culture Shock! ACT #6. Living and interacting with the Citizen of the World helps us to see many cultures and lives. Although it seems excited, living and studying in a different country certainly invites many challenges. This is the story about how people are overcoming the culture shock. Overcoming the challenges.
Entitled “How the Foreign Student Overcome the Culture Shock!” International Office Telkom University organized the 6th series of After Class Talk by inviting 3 speakers from 3 countries. The three speakers have studied at Telkom University, Son Won Gong (South Korea), Andriamalala (Madagascar) and Edino Martins (Timor Leste) shared their experiences of facing and overcoming the culture shock during life outside their comfort box.
The session was opened by great presentation from Edino Martins, a foreign student from Timor Leste about how he was overcoming the challenges. He joined Darmasiswa Program and learnt about Indonesian language and culture in 2019 in Telkom University. The difficulty in overcoming the culture shock is not comparable to the pleasant experience he had while in Bandung. Edi’s version of the best way overcoming Culture Shock is to follow all the activities suggested during the program and establish good communication with the locals.
Overcoming Study Abroad Challenges
Slightly different from Edi’s experience in overcoming the challenges, Son Won Gong shared his interesting experience while continuing his education in the USA. In 2015 he studied English as well as Indonesian language and culture at Telkom University through the Short Program, and now he is continuing his studies in the USA. Son Won Gong narrated well how he was overcoming the culture shock. When he first set foot in the USA, he didn’t even dare to chat with the locals. He wasn’t overcoming this yet. Not to mention the different academic culture between South Korea and the USA. In the USA, lecturers tend to give a lot of assignments. Finally, he began to venture to interact slowly with the locals and joined several campus activities and it turned out that the local people helped him a lot to adapt. He was successfully overcoming the culture shock.
After Class Talk #6 closed with a presentation from Andriamalala from Madagascar about he overcoming the challenges. Currently studying at Telkom University, Andriamalala is quite familiar with the Telkom campus and its surroundings and knew that he can overcoming this. But, his first days outside Madagascar were not easy. Andi experienced several culture shocks, both academically and socially. In his presentation he told how he was overcoming culture shock. Some students only want to hang out with people from their country, and the problem of differences in attitude and environment. To overcome the culture shock, he tries to be more open with others, trying to adopt a new culture while maintaining yours, and looking for association and/or organizations on campus. Overcoming things is not easy.
Overcoming the culture shock is not easy, but we will grow in the process. If international students overcoming this challenges, they will be OK.(IO)***
